Ongoing notes: TIFA’s Small Press Market (part two: Lannii Layke + Janette Platana,
the moment Ken Norris met ryan fitzpatrick
[see part one of my notes here] Here’s another accounting of some of the titles I pickedup at the most recent fair in Toronto!
Toronto ON: I’m fascinated by the debut chapbook by Toronto-based poet Lannii Layke, their Os (knife|fork|book, 2022), a gracefully-sleekcollection of exploratory poems. There is an intriguing narrative layering toLayke’s lines, offering line upon line upon fragment, a hush, and a halt. Theirauthor biography at the end of the collection offers a couple of intriguingdetails: “They attend to crafting memory and fine jewellery. In French, osis bone.” The poems here are crafted but not precious: precise, and deftin their resolve, offering eight first-person poems that seek, seek out. “wehave those secrets that stick us,” the poem “Sister” offers, “like our /talk and hate and / waxing piss onto our man [.]” There issuch graceful, absolute beauty in Layke’s searchings, one that sparkles not justthrough discovery, but revealing and remarking upon what was already known.
Plum
My frequency
factors in the cloning of plums
The rib of plum
in the posture of plumline a smaller Sweat
is that same salt collecting so
Toronto ON: There’s a wonderful sense of play and language acrossthe nine poems of Peterborough writer Janette Platana’s chapbook NewFairious (Anstruther Press, 2023), each offering short narratives, akin tocharacter studies, to a list of alternate fairies, from “The Shame Fairy” and “TheLiterary Fairy” to “The Fairies Feify & Deify” and “The Truth Fairy.” “Theyare not twins, these two,” the poem “The Fairies Reify & Deify” begins, “butreciprocating parasites who // rfuse to play host. / Yet each outstrips theother // in unxious luxury.” There’s a delight of sound and meaning through herword choises throughout these poems, offering an unexpected richness line by lineby narrative line, all of which rolls along into a sequence of impossibility. HowPlatana is a writer I hadn’t heard of previously, although her author biographyoffers that her short story collection, A Token of My Affliction (TorontoON: Tightrope Books, 2014), “was a Finalist for the Ontario Trillium BookAward.” Oh, how I wish to see more poems by Janette Platana.
The Shame Fairy
Her dust encauls you innausea.
Until the ignosecond ofHer enclaspment
you did not even know
She was a thing. Now, youare filled
with Her shitty gift.Now, you bob
inside Her gassy bubble
like you are the grinningbonhomme
in one of those oversizedinflatable snow globes
in the parking lot of thebiggest big box store
when your anchor cablehas sprung
and you bounce betweenparked cars,
legless, footless, aswell as entrapped,
head blog
indignant andindistinguishable
from bottom blog.
It would be funny if it weren’tforever.
